Flesh and Metal: Book One: The Saren Incident
by DiscordantSymphony
Summary: Set in an AU where the Geth came to Humanity's aide against the Turians during the First Contact War, Humanity takes a different path. But some things stay the same. Commander Shepard is put forward as the candidate for the Spectre program, he just happens to have an AI in his head. Humanity does not like Quarians, likes the Asari and Salarians and Anderson needs a drink. Or ten.
1. Prologue

Flesh and Metal:

Book One:

The Saren Incident:

Prologue:

He had always hated Arcturus Station, there was always a sense of oppression that hung in the air of the station that he had made sure that he had never felt comfortable. He had been able to bear with it on most of his previous visits because he normally had only been forced to stay on the station for a day or two before he was able to leave.

This time? David Anderson had been stuck on this damn station for three whole weeks. It didn't help that he had always hated space stations, they always made him feel like he was cut off from the real world. Sort of timeless, apparently it was quite a usual occurrence if you did not regularly spend a lot of time on space stations and could happen on ships as well.

Anderson had never noticed it happening to him on a ship however, he had not made it a habit to ask but he had his own theory about it. The feeling of the engine under his feet, the constant movement, the fact that you were going somewhere made him more comfortable on a ship than it did on a station when you were simply floating in space.

Well, with a bit of luck this would be the last day on the station and he would be able to get on with the mission at hand. On the other hand, if Lady Luck liked him at all then he wouldn't be on this damn station in first place. He still didn't fully understand why he actually was, other than the fact that it was going to involve his crew and his ship.

It would be the first time brass had done something without telling him about it and expecting him to just go along with it and getting the job done, all things considered this was practically considerate of them. He didn't like it.

An elevator was waiting for him at the end of the corridor and once he had stepped inside it David rested his hand against the holo console and did not press any of the buttons. After a few moments the console pinged and new icon appeared on the console, the Greek symbol of Omega, and with only a moment of hesitation David pressed it.

Even on Arcturus, the elevators were slow. He thanked whoever might be listening that he wasn't forced to endure endless elevator music or indeed a news broadcast. He was left alone with nothing but his thoughts as he descended deep into the bowls of the station.

The elevator let him out into a long corridor that was barely lit aside from a line of red lights on the floor that seemed to be leading him to the single door at the end of the corridor. He had to wonder, not for the first time, who had designed this place. The brass wasn't exactly known for being theatrical. Regardless, he began to walk down the corridor towards the door.

On the wall next to the door was a mounted hand scanner and when David pressed his palm to it, there was chirp from it and it flashed green for a moment before the door itself slide open.

There were three people waiting for him inside and David again was shocked that such an important decision was being left to only the four of them, he would have expected the entire High Admiralty, a score of Generals and the President himself to be here making such a decision with them. But no, it was just the four of them.

Donnell Udina was the ambassador for Humanity to the council and David did not like him, at all. He did have a deal of respect for him, however. He had a thankless job to say the very least and David would not want to be in his place or have his job. He was also just a colossal arse who David had the very understandable believe that needed a punch to the eye.

High Admiral Hackett was sitting across from Udina and David shot off a salute in his direction, Steven Hackett was the only member of the Admiralty who had been sent to oversee this process which David thought that he understood. The fifth fleet was stationed out in Citadel space and thus he was the one who had the most amount of dealings with the Council, he was also highly respected within the Alliance itself.

The last person in the room was the only woman and David was fairly sure was the most dangerous out of all of them. Nasreen Lata was tall for a woman, six foot or even slightly over with dark skin, long black hair which was often bounded up in a bun and a long scar for the corner of her mouth up to the lobe of her ear. A cigarette was clenched in her left hand.

David and Hackett were both in their dress blues and Udina was dressed in a robe that had been made for him by his personal Asari tailor, Lata was dressed in light armor and while she was not armed David knew that she did not need to be. She was high up in the black ops division of the Alliance and she probably knew a hundred different ways to kill someone without a weapon.

Not that David thought that she would but he also knew that he was not going to take any chances with her, just to be on the safe side. "Captain Anderson, you're late." Udina said from where he was sitting, not even bothering to look up from his data pad. "Well, now that you're here at the very least we can begin. With a bit of luck, we will reach a decision."

"That would be for the best Ambassador." Nasreen spoke as she moved over to the table, stubbed her smoke out on the polished wood and sat down in the chair next to him. "My superiors have informed me that the President is getting anxious and we would all like for a decision to be reached as soon as possible."

"Then let's get on with it then." David muttered as he took his own seat and once he had done so, Admiral Hackett cleared his throat and a soft light began to emanate from the centre of the table. It did not take any sort of shape, but the light itself seemed to shift and twisted in way that reminded David of an old lave lamp that Kahlee had found in an old market place back in London.

Admiral Hackett spoke, his voice was gravel but as always there was a hint of iron underneath it. "Oracle, present three best options for admittance into the spectre program." The light beeped and began to shift and twist and David had to admit it, he found it unnerving.

Oracle wasn't an AI, but it was as close as any of them were willing to push the limit without angering the council. It was linked to almost every single server that the System Alliance had and it could compute trillions and trillions of gigabytes of date in a matter of seconds. David didn't consider himself anti AI but anyone with eyes could see the danger that Oracle posed.

Of course, it's developers had said that there was nothing to worry about, every single precaution had been taken. There were thousands of software blocks inside the program itself to stop it from gaining sentience and even if it managed to somehow get past all of them, there were dozens of hardware blocks in place to stop her from causing any real damage whatsoever.

They had even pointed out that just because Oracle was linked to those servers did not mean she could actually interact with them, she observed and correlated date. Nothing more and the more sources that she had to draw from then the better for all of them. If Synthetic Rights found out that it was shackled in such a way, there would be outrage and if the elements in the Alliance that disapproved of AI, even the Geth, found out that it was linked to the servers there would be riots in the streets.

After a few moments of silence a soft ping filled the room and the light finally took shape, a woman with a shaved head and dressed in light combat armour, a shotgun in her arms. A synthetic voice, devoid of any emotion or infliction filled the room. "Lieutenant Julia Tia, fifteen years of service. Current assignment: Cross species training assignment; serving in the Amarli militia."

Another ping and the projection changed, this time the shape it took was a large black man with a shaved head. "Commander Majid Taha, thirty years of service, N7. Current Assignment: Serving under Captain Thomas Tyvell on the SSV Endurance."

Another ping and the light shifted for the last time and another shape took place, this one was a man who was much younger than the other two. "Corporal Kis Rajmund, seven years of service. Special recommendation, awarded Star of Terra for involvement in the defence of Caleston."

After all of them were presented to them, it was up to them to make the decision. Arguments were raised and then shot down, points were brought up and counter points were fired back. Tia had seriously emotional issues and taking her out of the program might make them worse, or more seriously offend the Asari Republic, she might even have been compromised. Taha had been serving on the Endurance for twenty years under Tyvell and the captain had powerful friends and could make a stink if his commander was taken from him. Kis was a hero but far too young.

There was no screaming or shouting, not a single voice was raised beyond what was needed to simply be heard but the frustration soon became an undercurrent that all of them could feel. They couldn't blame Oracle, it just complied the best of the date it had access to and offered up the choices. It didn't stop to understand the human element of it.

"There is another option gentlemen, if I may?" Nasreen spoke and stood from her seat and activated her Omni-tool, her fingers dancing over it for a few moments and a new projection appeared on the table. A man with brown skin and blue almond shaped eyes with jet black hair, a sniper rifle was held in his arms and his face was blank mask. Anderson felt a chill in his stomach.

"Him? Didn't we send him to you so we wouldn't have to deal with him any more?" Udina's tone was filled with derision and maybe just slightly a tiny hint of fear, Hackett said nothing. "Forgetting for a fact his questionable service history when he was simply in the regular navy do I need to point out what would happen if anyone found out that he works for you know? The things he has done."

"Are terrible things indeed, but the Council has done terrible things as well. The Salarian Union bred monsters in the darkness, The Asari Republic are imprisoning their own for a genetic mutation and are doing anything they can to cover it up and do I need to being on the Turians? I don't think I need too, Ethan Shepard has his issues of his own, you don't walk away from your entire squad being butchered without them, but he also has some of the most experience working with the council races than most of our soldiers."

Udina frowned and tapped his fingers against the desk for a long moment as he stared at the projection. "He has an AI in his head, that had always been a sore subject. The Asari and the Salarians might let it slide but if the Turians catch wind of it-"

"Which they won't, unless they plan on splitting his skull open." Nasreen dismissed her Omni-Tool, the projection fading away into nothingness as she sat down on the chair and crossed her arms over her chest. "Ethan Shepard is my recommendation, he has the ruthlessness that any Spectre is going to need to get the job down but he isn't a madman, if I recommended the Butcher then I would understand, but Ethan is stable."

Hackett leaned forward and crossed his fingers together, shutting his eyes for a long moment before he opened them and turned his attention to look at David. "David, you and Commander Shepard have...history, to say the very least. Do you think that you could work with him under you for the mission?"

He could still hear the screaming in his dreams, the smell of burning and the way Ethan had stood there with the knife in his hand, blood dripping from the end of it. He had looked so young, so very afraid and David didn't think he had ever hated anyone as much as he had Ethan Shepard in that moment. Anderson sighed and nodded. "Ethan and I have history, you all know that for a fact. I would be lying if I said that I did not have some reservations, but he's a good solider and he can get the job done. I promise you. So, he has my vote. We need to choose someone."

"My vote as well." Hackett turned to Udina then. "Ambassador, we need to be united in this. Yay or nay?"

Udina sighed and Anderson had to feel a tiny bit sorry for him for all the future headaches he had probably caused him. "Yay."

And just like that, it was done. And Anderson could only hope he hadn't made a terrible mistake.

End of Prologue.

 **xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

 **Okay so.**

 **This story has been one that has been a long, confusing and complicated path to get out. Originally, I planned for this story to be published after I had written an in depth universe and a prequel story that would have set everything up as to how the world worked,**

 **But as I've gotten older and, I hope, a better writer I couldn't help but think that I might have been putting the cart before the horse somewhat. I still have tons of ideas for how this changed universe works and hopefully fleshes out certain characters and the species within the game and their cultures.**

 **But if the end product which would have been this story is bad, why would people care about the universe behind it? So instead, I put the horse first. Write this story and then if people want me too, give more attention to the Universe itself in other stories. Hopefully there are some intriguing hints for the story here that people like and will motivate them to go forward.**

 **I hope you like it a lot and will consider following, leaving a favourite and reviewing.**

 **With a ton of love,**

 **DiscordantSymphony**


	2. Chapter 1

Flesh and Metal:

Book One:

The Saren Incident:

Chapter One

The rain was falling heavily on the city of Nos Astra and a thousand skycars rushed over ahead. The capital city of Illium thrummed with life above and within but by the end of the night there would be slightly less then there had been the night before.

Polymorph Manufacturing was a large complex which took up an entire single square mile with several large uniform buildings within the grounds, grey and stark Salarian uniformity looking somewhat out of place against the towering spires of Asari elegance the towered over the complex. Polymorph had been declared bankrupt and gone out of business close to six months before hand so the facility worth billions of credits had been left abandoned as dozens of companies squabbled over who would buy it.

But while the most powerful of Illium squabbled over who would truly own the complex, others had not decided to wait on the opportunity and Eclipse had made use of the facility for their own ends. Crates of Red Sand, Goddess's Kiss, Infinity's End and thousands of other drugs were being shipped across the Terminus Systems from right here.

Whoever did wind up buying the factory who have a hell of job trying to convince the mercenaries to clear out, there were at least two hundred mercs inside from what he had been able to see and they were stiffened by security mechs. So in that way Ethan Shepard supposed that he was doing whoever would buy it something of a favour.

He was perched high up on a rafter in the largest of the buildings, looking down on the factory floor below as the Mercs carried out their tasks. Securing packages, performing weapon checks and performing patrols. There were only thirty or so on the floor along with his target so that would make things easier than they would have been.

Or so he would have thought if one of those Mercs wasn't a Krogan. Big, tough and with a regeneration factor that made the safe option nuking from orbit. It was odd to see a Krogan in Eclipse of all places, most of them ended up in the Blood Pack and the few that didn't would either stay independent or go and work for the Blue Suns.

Regardless, he would need to deal with him quickly and indirectly. Ethan didn't consider himself a coward, he just know his own strengths and weaknesses and if he tried to fight a Krogan head on then it would only end with him being a smear on the walls, floor and celling.

But while the Krogan might have been the biggest threat of all of them down their, he was not the reason why Ethan was there. No, that honour belonged to Talia Dantius, leader of this specific band of Eclipse, one of Jona Sederis's favourites and younger sister of Nassana Dantius, an Asari who had fingers in almost every pie on Illium and one who saw her younger sister as a problem that she didn't want to suffer any longer.

She looked like she could be a problem as well, dressed in heavy purple armour with a heavy machine gun clasped tightly in her hands and her dark blue eyes scanned everything, looking closely at every shadow. He had to wonder if she knew what was coming or at the very least suspected it, he wouldn't be surprised if she did. Nassana did not tend to go for subtly.

He had done plenty of reading up on the target, she had been a Commando for nearly sixty years before retiring and coming to Illium and joining up with Eclipse, within ten years she had sized control of the band on Illium and had made them twice as effective, twice as dangerous and twice as fucking nuts. More people than just her sister would be glad of it once she was gone.

There was a soft ping that he only he could hear, followed by a voice speaking that belonged to no one that anyone could see. It was soft, sweet and synthetic. With just a hint of amusement in there as well. "All communications have been scrambled and I've sealed the doors of the factory, Commander. They will not be able to leave or radio for help."

Ethan made no acknowledgement that he had heard her, he didn't need too. Nova had known that he had heard her. "How much time do we have?" He whispered.

"According to my scans, forty-five minutes." Ah, well shit. He would have liked a little more time than that but sometimes you just had to deal with what you were given. Which, in his case, was quite a bit to be fair.

Alongside the thirty mercs there was also at least a dozen Loki Mechs, crouched and powered down. Two Ymir mechs, one with a machine gun arm and a rocket launcher arm and the other with two rocket launcher arms were at the back of the room, also deactivated with their heads bowed and their arms hanging limp at their sides. The mechs were cheap and readily avalible so they were often used to stiffen security forces.

Ethan moved across the rafter to get into a better position and then active his Omni-Tool, his fingers dancing across it as he spoke. "Nova, hack the Ymir's, activate them and disable the IFF. I'll do the same with the Loki mechs." The AI did not respond with words, only a single soft beep as the both of them set out to their work.

The Loki's activated first, the downside of being cheap also meant cheap security, and they jolted and rose up from their crouching position and drew the cheap machine pistols that they were shipped with. Moments later, the Ymir's started to stir as well. Now, they were online and their ability to distinguish between Friend and Foe was gone, but they wouldn't attack until shots were fired.

So, Ethan drew his rifle and stared down the scope at one of the Mercs who was pointing at the Loki's and pulled the trigger. The merc's head jerked roughly as the as the metal that had been accelerated to faster than light speed punched through armour plating, skin, flesh, bone and grey matter before coming out the over side in a spray of blood and bone fragments.

Chaos erupted below. Guns were aimed up at the rafters and the walkways and a storm of gunfire rained down on them, Ethan taking care to keep his head down and keep moving as well as making sure his barriers were still up. It only took a second of that hail of gunfire for the mechs to respond and more screams floated up towards him.

The VI that drove the Loki's was basic, to say the very least. Others, slightly less charitably, had referred to them as completely brain dead. They could move forward and pull the trigger of whatever weapon they had in their hand and that was about the long and the short of it. The barrage of gunfire they unleashed did little more than hit against the shields of the mercs and draw their attention.

But then he hadn't expected them do more than that and the Ymir mechs did more than to make up for it. The software that ran them was not much more complicated than the Loki mechs but it made up for it with their armaments. The fire of a heavy machine gun broke through the ranks of mechs, alarms flaring as shields went down, screams echoing as rockets were sent flying, soon followed by various body parts.

And through all of it Ethan took shots from his rifle, one through the heart of an Asari who had been in the middle of calling on her biotics to defend herself, another through the head of a Salarian man who had brought up his Omni-tool and looked like he was in the middle of trying to restore the mechs IFF or to send out a message for help.

The Krogan was charging at one of the Ymir's, the same one whose rocket had taken off one of it's arms, with a blood rage the likes of which Ethan was certain that he hadn't seen before. The grey plated tank tossed aside his weapon and leapt on to the large mech and tore at it's head, roaring all the while as it forced it's hand through armour platting and pulled out wires like entrails.

A round from his rifle went through the back of the Krogan's head, causing it to fall and roll of the mech. Ethan quickly grabbed a high explosive grenade from off of his belt and tossed it towards the downed mech before jumping off of the rafter to take cover behind a large shipping crate.

The explosion that followed after was enough to shake the earth and he knew that it wasn't just the mercs he would have to worry about now, but half of Illium as well. Still, it was the safest way to deal with the Krogan, the shot to the back of the head might have stunned it but his regeneration would have kicked it as soon as the round had entered, but an explosion that Imparted enough damage should have killed him.

He had to be sure that Talia was dead before he leaved, he glanced around the corner of the shipping crate and frowned. There was naught left of the Ymir's mech or the krogan aside from some sparking parts of machinery and a large orange stain on the floor in the middle of a burn mark. Smoke and fire filled the air and caused his eyes to water.

Loki mechs who had survived the blast were crawling on the ground, voices garbling some mention of needing repairs. Bodies of dead mercs were scattered across the floor, cooked inside their armor or dead from gunfire.

"Nova, is there anyone other life sign in this room other than-" He didn't have the time to finish as the whole world went upside down, a singularity that had formed in the middle of the room was disrupting gravity and Ethan uttered a string of colourful curses which were interrupted as something that felt like a bolder slammed into his middle and sent him flying through the air, till the singularity faded away and he collapsed to the ground, holding his middle as he tried to catch his breath.

Talia Dantius marched toward him, a bloody wound marring half of her face and her biotic aura flaring white hot around her. "You came into my place, murder my men and then think you can just slip away. Oh, fuck that. I am going to do things to you that are so awful that it makes me feel sick to even think about them." She threw out her arm and a half formed warp field flew towards him.

Ethan didn't have time to think, he could only react. So, he threw out his hands and his biotics came to his aid and his own warp field collided with Talia's in mid air. Talia could only laugh as she leaned in with her own power, Ethan could feel his skull shaking in his head and he was certain his teeth with shivering as he tried push against the force.

"Oh, now this is adorable. Give it up Monkey, I've been a warrior since before you were born. And you think you can defeat me in a duel of biotics." Talia Dantius laughed and laughed and laughed.

Shepard, straining and sweating and barely able to stand could only smirk as he dropped one arm to active his Omni-Tool, thrusting it towards her and taking perhaps too much pleasure in watching as the green field of dampening tech surrounded her and reduced her aura to nothing. "Nope, so I think I am going to cheat instead."

The Asari roared and reached for her machine pistol on her hip but Shepard was faster, drawing his own supressed pistol and pulling the trigger twice, blasting two holes into the woman's skull, causing her to fall on to her face. Dead.

Shepard breathed and then cursed himself, for one trying to breath with bruised ribs hurt and trying to breath with bruised ribs inside a room that was partially on fire was more than likely not a good idea. Nova decided that was the time for her to chime in. "Commander, the remaining of the mercenary force are converging on your position and I have logged no fewer than thirty calls to the Nos Astra police department, also, three minutes remain."

"Shit, thanks Nova." Shepard glanced around and called on his biotics once again, wrapping himself in a lift field and gently floating himself up towards the rafters, grabbing hold of the rafter and pulling himself up on to it. Below, he could hear shouts from the mercs, calling out for their leader and to be let in. Shepard wasn't planning on obliging them.

It took him three minuites to arrive back at his skycar, tucked in a little ally close to the main gate of the complex, and then another minute to get it into the air. He laid the auto course in for home and leaned back in his chair, dosing himself with medi gel to combat the pain in his chest.

He was five minutes behind when he reached his apartment building, eight minutes when he finally arrived at his floor and got to his door. As soon as he opened the door, he was meet with a wail of unhappiness that caused Shepard to sigh heavily. He walked into the kitchen and retrieved a bottle full of milk from the fridge and walked over to the door where the crying was coming from.

Shepard walked into the room and walked over to the playpen, reaching down to pick up the little blue baby girl and pressed a kiss to the smooth skin of her forehead before offering her the rubber nipple of the bottle. The baby accepted it but looked up at him with judgemental indigo eyes that were still full of tears and Shepard could only sigh as he fed her. "I know baby, Daddy wasn't here when you woke up for your feed. That's cause Daddy is a bad person who kills people for a crazy lady so he can get close to her because a bunch of other crazy people told him too, see one thing you'll learn is that Daddy is kind of a fuck up. Yes, yes he is."

Ethan carried his tiny blue daughter into the living room and sat down on the sofa as she drank from the bottle, Ethan titled his head back and let out a heavy sigh as the ache of his ribs on top of every other ache lulled him into a relaxed state. All he wanted to do was sleep but he knew that would have to wait till later, once the baby was asleep.

As soon as he thought it, she started to get fussy and Ethan pulled the bottle away from her. Putting her up to his shoulder he proceeded to burp her and thanked god she didn't spit up this time. He was just about to carry her into the nursery when Nova pinged in again. "Ethan." That was a concern, Nova almost always called him either Commander or Shepard, almost never Ethan. "Operator Nasreen is here."

Shit. Shepard carried his daughter over to her high chair and placed her in it with a kiss to her forehead before he walked over to the door, he pulled it open and saw Nasreen standing there, her hand almost about to touch the call button. She stared at him with her dark eyes for a long few moments before she let out a sigh. "That never stops being creepy, you know."

"Hello Operator, would you like some coffee?" Shepard already knew how this was going to go, he turned and walked into the kitchen and turned on the machine as Nasreen closed the door before following him inside and into the kitchen. Cream but no sugar, if he remembered rightly. He turned around to see the operator standing in front of the high chair, her upper body bowed.

She stared at his daughter for a long moment, her face unreadable before she reached out with a longer finger and poked her on the nose. "Boop." That sent the baby into a fit of giggles and Ethan had to roll his eyes as he placed the coffee cup on the kitchen island. "Shooting up like a weed." Nasreen muttered as she picked up the cup but didn't take a sip. "Still set on the name."

"Considering it's the name she's had for the past couple of months, yes. Jin isn't that bad." Ethan crossed his arms over his chest as he stared at her firmly. "All right, pleasantries aside, what are you doing here? You could break my cover and I've put a lot of work into this job, has to be something important right? You wouldn't come yourself otherwise."

Nasreen placed the coffee cup down and activated her Omni-tool, Ethan's flashed into existence as it received a download. Shepard opened the download and watched as ship schematics and crew manifests flashed into front of his eyes. "SSV Normandy, top of the range frigate with a new experimental drive core. Partly designed by the Turians as a way to try and improve relations with the Hierarchy. I want you on it."

He was surprised that the Alliance was willing to try and make headway with the Turians, considering that their relationship with the Geth was so strong partly because they had stood united against them in First Contact war, or the Dusk War as the Geth liked to call it. Still, what the brass chose to do wasn't his business. "Fine, why do you want me on it?"

"The captain needs a commander, it's a new crew and I suggested you."

"I haven't served on a ship in years, forget about commanding soldiers."

"You'll do fine, more than fine I am certain."

"Whose the captain?"

"Anderson."

"Anderson. You're joking, right?" To say things had not ended well there would be like saying a swarm of angry killer hornets might sting a little. "Why would he want me on the same ship. When he finds out he is going to lose it.

"He won't, he asked for you." Something was wrong, none of this made any sense.

"There is something you're not telling me, you wouldn't come all this was just to tell me I am going back into the regular forces. What about Dantius? It's taken me years to get this close."

"Dantius can wait, in the grand scheme of things she isn't that important, we only thought that she was becoming a big player and it might benefit us to have someone on the inside. And yes, there is something I am not telling you but that's just the deal. I tell you to do something, and you do it. Do you remember that? You may not be a marine but you are still a solider. And if you disobey, well, you know what happened then."

"You don't have to remind me." Ethan growled the presence of Nova in his head was like a weight that pressed on his skull from the inside. He turned away from Nasreen and looked at Jin, her head was bowed. She had fallen asleep in her high chair like nothing was wrong at all. "I'll need a place to put her, a good place."

"I'll see to it, you have my word. You can send her vid messages every month."

Commander Ethan Shepard let out a sigh, it could be a lot worse. He turned to face his handler, his face a mask of stone as he nodded. "Give me twenty minutes to get packed, Operator."

End of Chapter One

* * *

 **I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter, for those who are a little confused I don't want to go into too much here but basically:**

 **Shepard entered the Navy and rose to the rank he has in canon, at some point he got enlisted into the Alliance Black Ops division, think Cerberus but on a tighter leash and has been working for them since. The AI in his head was placed there, partly to aid him in ops but also as a control measure, it will fry his mind if he defects. Nova itself is sentient but is also programed to be loyal to the Black Ops divison, like EDI she's a sentient AI but one that's limited by the blocks in her programming.** **The hows and the whys as to how Shepard got here...well, we'll get to those later.**

 **Oh, and he has an Asari daughter as well.**

 **Tons of love to everyone;**

 **Please review and follow and favourite if you enjoyed.**

 **Discordant Symphony**


	3. Chapter 2

Flesh and Metal:

Book One:

The Saren Incident:

Chapter Two

Purgatory wasn't exactly his sort of place but it was the best out of a bunch of bad options, the Dark Star Lounge was too expensive and the whiff of a lot of money trying to act like it actually belonged on the wards, Flux was okay but there was always someone making a scene about someone cheating on the game machines and it ending with either the accuser or the accused getting thrown out on their arse by that Krogan bodyguard that worked there and was built like a tank even by Krogan standards.

There was also Chora's Den but if there was anywhere that Kaiden Alenko was sure that he didn't want to be then it was there, there was always a whiff of something in the air that made him feel a bit like he was going to be sick, everyone in there seemed to be miserable or glaring at you like they were going to kill you if you took one step too close to them.

And the entertainment...Kaiden didn't consider himself a prude, but watching half naked blue girls who were only barely covered by skin tight red leather dance on the top of tables and moan in ways that would make a porn star jealous was not the sort of thing he had in mind when he wanted to sit back and relax. He knew that a lot of the friends he had considered him boring because of that but it was just the way he was.

Purgatory was the best out of all of them, not as seedy as the Den but not as fake as the Lounge and there was rarely any of the drama or loud noises of Flux that always seemed to set a migraine off. Purgatory was dark and quiet and while there was the occasional spat of drama, a drunken argument or someone having their drink thrown in their face it wasn't too often much of a problem.

So that was the reason that Kaiden choose it as the place that he would be having his last drink before he was on duty later on in the day, he would never normally drink on the same day that he was due to ship out but this time felt special, this was the ship's maiden voyage after all and the entire crew had been given a day of shore leave while the captain sorted out some bussiness and the new XO arrived and Kaiden didn't plan on overdoing it.

It was odd that an Alliance ship would dock at the Citadel for a shakedown run but in a way it made a sort of sense, the Turians had helped them to develop it and though it was being given to them they wanted to see how she would perform which seemed fair enough to him. A Turian Spectre was coming with them as, which Joker has never stopped talking about was bizarre.

Kaiden didn't really think so, the Council Races wanted to keep an eye on their investment to see that it wasn't a waste of money and who better to send than one of their own who could also act as eyes for the Turian Hierarchy. Joker had informed him that it was all bullshit, they wouldn't send a member of their secret police, in his words, to oversee that a ship was performing well. They would send a team of accountants and scientists.

Kaiden hadn't been in the mood to argue so he had simply suggested that they agree to disagree at which point Joker had rolled his eyes and muttered something about how that was what people said when they couldn't think of a good argument. Kaiden had to remind himself that punching Joker in the shoulder would probably cause his entire arm to shatter so he had simply focused back on his work.

He hadn't worked with Joker before this assignment before but he had heard of him and going by his test scores and the few test flights they had done to make sure that the ship wouldn't rip itself apart when they tried a manoeuvre seemed to suggest that all he had heard of him was true. He was a damn good pilot, he was a complete and utter ass who seemed to answer everything with bad jokes, but he could make the Normandy dance.

The Normandy itself was an amazing ship, a slightly larger than average frigate with a state of the art drive core that made it one of the fastest ships in the entire fleet as well as having a brand new stealth system, Kaiden didn't consider himself a genius by any definition of the word but even if he was he didn't think he would understand any of the science that went behind the stealth system.

It didn't cloak them, anyone could look out of a window and see them coming but it disguised their heat emissions and basically made them incapable of being detected by most scanning systems meaning they could loiter in an enemy system and the enemy would be none the wiser. It was also extremely expensive from what he had overheard, so much so that the money that had been spent devolving the system could have instead been used to build two cruisers, half a dozen frigates and a score of fighters.

And that was just the stealth system, the Normandy itself must have been the most expensive ship in the entire fleet except possibly the Independence. The ship also had the most expensive and cutting edge sensor systems in the known galaxy, an larger than normal torpedo stockpile and of course, it's own AI that had been specifically designed for the ship itself.

The Enhanced Defence Intelligence, or EDI as the crew had taken to calling her, was apparently in charge of the ship's infowar suite. In ship to ship combat she could hack another ship and disrupt their gravity, turn off their life support, feed their sensors false information or tamper with their weapons. It was an impressive package to say the least.

EDI also had a dry sense of humour and seemed to take no end of joy in making Joker miserable, which if Kaiden was more immature than he might admit to taking an absurd amount of delight in but he would never be so immature as to laugh at his shipmate's misfortune. Never at all. At any rate, it built character.

As well as the cyberwar suite, EDI also was in direct control of a pack of ten ATHENA mechs, highly advanced with built in kinetic shield generators with an competent VI program to drive them they also had a blueware connetion that allowed EDI to take full control of them and direct them on the battlefield herself which apparently made them much more effective on the battlefield though Kaiden had not seen that for himself yet.

EDI wasn't the only AI on board of course, there was also the Geth as well. Something like a hundred thousand runtimes in the ship's systems, helping EDI to keep them running all though EDI herself was mainly only responsible for the info war capabilities of the Normandy while the Geth tended to be responsible for everything else, life support and atmospheric controls mainly.

He knew that the other races in the galaxy found that strange, at best. The Turians found it to be insanity to leave the operations of any ship systems to any sort of synthetic intelligence and had constant operators every single moment, Asari and Salarians were not as opposed to the idea as they often used high tech VI's to help run their ships but the concept of an AI actually running ship systems was something that they stopped dead at.

Kaiden didn't really understand why, it wasn't as though the AI memebers of the crew were in complete control of the ship, if so then they wouldn't need an organic crew at all. The Geth runtimes weren't the programming of the ship after all they simply existed within the ship systems, catching the mistakes or giltches that were always occuring before they became dangerous while the organic members of the crew were able to come up with more creative thinking that an AI couldn't, being able to think outside the box.

It was a proven fact, the symbotic nature of synthtics and organics. Hundreds and hundreds of papers of how human society had changed with the Geth and their looser laws on the devolping of Artificial Intelligences, of which the vast majority were massively positive while only a couple of them were actually negative and most of them had been sponsored by anti-synthetic nuts or Terra Firma.

The Geth also had combat runtimes which would load into combat platforms stored on the Normandy which could join their marine deployment and EDI's mechs on any missions, the aliens could think whatever they wanted but Kaiden knew that if he was going to go into a live fire zone then he wanted a squad of war robots on his side, especially war robots which were carrying rifles which could reduce an enemy to slurry.

He was in the middle of considering when to order another drink when his Omni-Tool flashed into existence with a message sent to all Normandy crew members, apparently the Turian spectre had arrived earlier than anyone had been expecting him too and the new XO had sent a message that he was on the way. Shore leave was being cut short.

Kaiden let out a sigh before standing up from his stool and stretching his arms over his head, craning his neck side to side to try and loosen his tense muscles. He made sure to pay his bill to the Asari bartender, making sure to remember to give her a generous tip as his dad had always taught him to do before he turned and made his way out of the bar.

The bright light of the presidium stung at his eyes and he brought up his arms to rub at them as a migraine threatened to start inside of his skull and Kaiden couldn't help but sigh, it had been a while since he had actually had a really bad flare up and he just hoped it stayed that way till the end of the shakedown run, he did not need the new XO thinking he was incompetent because he couldn't handle a bad headache.

Perhaps someone was looking down on him that day because as soon as the rapid transit car he called for arrived the pressured at the back of his head eased off and Kaiden didn't feel like his brain was going to burst inside of his skull anymore. It probably just meant that he was due for a worse one later down the line but he was going to take what he could get.

The inside of the transit car was spacious, air conditioned and had leather seats which Joker had not shut up about ever since they had arrived on the station. It certainly put Arcturus in perspective, when Kaiden had first seen the seat of the Alliance goverment he thought that it was the most impressive structure that he was ever likely to see, seeing the Citadel for the first time made him realise that it couldn't really compare.

Not just in size but in terms of wealth as well, Arcturus looked impressive from the outside and a lot of money had gone into getting it into space but every single inch was carefully planned and not a single inch was wasted or not planned for, it was uniform and grey with a smell in the air that reminded Kaiden of a hospital but the Presdium was bright and there was nothing uniform about it at all, there was an actual lake in the middle of it and gardens at either side of it.

It only made sense, the Asari Republics were insanely wealthy, their economy was so massive that it could crush the Alliance economy practically overnight if they actually wanted too. The Asari had been the first to find the citadel and most of it's inhabitants were Asari and they had customised the ancient space station to be what they saw as comfortable.

The route the transit car had chosen took him over the lake and when Kaiden looked out of the window he could see the wide sprawl of the presidium, the Krogan statue with it's head thrown back in a silent roar with a carved heavy shotgun clutched in one meaty fist, the relay monument that always made his teeth ache when he walked past it standing proud and tall and on the bridges that crossed over the lake were hundreds upon hundreds of Asari going about their lives, dozens of Turians and Salarians among them as well as the odd Human.

The most opulent part of the citadel soon got left behind and the wealth of the Asari Republics was replaced with dark encroaching corners and neon lights, even within the transit car Kaiden could smell the roasting meat, seasoned with spices and herbs that he knew Humanity had no names for. It was not as bright or safe or as clean as the presidium, but it was alive.

Soon even that was left behind however as the civilian life of the Citadel was left behind to be replaced with men and woman in the grey uniforms of dock workers and the armoured suits of C-SEC as they hurried about doing their jobs, ensuring that nothing harmful was being brought aboard the space station while others were taking credit chits to ensure that something dangerous was brought on board, with C-SEC choosing to look the other way when given their own credits.

Kaiden frowned but it wasn't as though there was anything he could do about it, aside from maybe making a report but he doubted that the higher ups in the security force didn't already know that their own people were dirty. In the end, he was just surprised that the corruption was so very blatant. He hadn't been on the Citadel much in his career but the first day he had come on shore leave the double dealing in the docks had stuck out like a sore thumb.

The transit car set itself down on a landing pad at the far edge of the docks, Kaiden paid the fee and the door of the car slide open. The Normandy was docked at the end of the bay and already a steady stream of the crew was already filing in through the airlock.

Most of the non-humans were giving the Normandy a wide breath and Kaiden could only assume it had too do with the two Geth Marines that were standing guard on the exterior airlock, both shot him a quick version of the Geth salute, resting their hand on their chests before bringing them to the bright lenses at the end of the tubes that acted as their faces. Kaiden returned the human version.

Sadly despite how advanced the Normandy was it seemed said advancement did not include the airlocks, the sterilisation protocols still seemed to take a good solid fifteen minutes and when it was Kaiden's turn to board he almost could breath due to the ten other members of the crew that had stepped in to the airlock to be disinfected with him. The elevators were just as bad and always seemed to be the part of the ship most likely to break down.

The airlock finished it's procedure not a moment too soon and while the other members of the crew made their way down the walkway down into the CIC Kaiden turned and made his way towards the cockpit where Joker was sitting in the pilot's seat, his body lit by the soft blue glow that the hologram representation of EDI always seemed to cast.

When Kaiden took his place in the ops station, bringing his hand up to access the status reports, he noticed that Joker's teeth were clenched tightly and Kaiden wondered if he had to call up Chakwas to bring her up here to make sure she could treat Joker before he suffered from a stress fracture. "I swear to god that I am going to scrub you from the systems even if I have to do it one zero at a time."

"I must remind you Mr. Moreau that such an action would be considered an act of first degree murder under the revised Alliance charter of 2158." EDI's voice was as polite as ever but Kaiden was certain that she only choose to speak in that tone of voice because she saw how much it infuriated Jeff. "Also, such an act would also reduce the optimal operating capacity of the Normandy both by losing use of the info war suite as well as likely ensuring that you will make the mistaking of performing an FTL jump in front of an asteroid."

"Did say I was going to scrub you from the system?" Joker said in a chocked whisper, his features stuck in the shape of a pained grimace. "What I meant to say was that I was going to go and grab an assault rifle from the armoury and empty it into your core until it overheats and explodes, how does that sound instead EDI?

"Such an action would not be considered an act of first degree murder but would in fact be considered an act of attempted murder as it would prove to be deeply ineffective, my core is reinforced with armour and a kinetic barrier and even if you provided sufficient damage to my core I have extensive backup systems through out ship to protect myself if the primary core is any way damaged."

"So in the end, all you would be left with is an attempted murder charge, a ruined assault rifle which would need to be replaced with your own personal fees due to it being damaged outside of combat and if it did explode then you would most likely need cybernetic replacements for your hands, would you like me to perform a extranet search for a cyber clinic for you?" If EDI could smirk then Kaiden did not doubt that a massive one would be on her face.

Joker let out a low groan and shook his head, muttering something under his breath that would make a krogan blush. The steely tone of Captain Anderson sounded out behind them. "Flight Lieutenant, a bit of restraint if you would and focus on getting us ready for take off. EDI, you have many important tasks that need your attention and I am fairly sure that winding up Flight Lieutenant Moreau is not one of them."

"I am an excellent multitasker Captain Anderson, logging you out." The soft blue glow that EDI projected faded away as EDI's avatar popped out of existence and Kaiden spun his chair around to face the captain, his face was a firm mask that radiated a sense of disapproval but his warm brown eyes held a hint of amusement that the Captain would never admit too.

Over Captain's shoulder was the Turian spectre that the council had assigned to the Normandy, his plating was a deep brown close to mahogany in colour and his eyes were a bright green, his fringe was wide at the base of his skull and narrowed to a point towards the end of it, he was a head taller than the captain and his form was encased in heavy armour.

Said Turian glanced between him and Joker before he turned his attention to EDI's projector, the Spectre did not have any lips but Kaiden was fairly sure that he was frowning. "You humans surprised me with your willingness to use AI's, some would call it a great deal of arrogance in fact to think that you will not repeat any of our mistakes. Using AI's as servants has never lead to anything but suffering."

Anderson turned to the Specter with a frown on his face. "Forgive me Spectre Nihilus but the Geth are not are servants, they are allies and I would recommend that you keep such an opinion to yourself, a very few humans would find themselves agreeing with you and any and all AI's created in Alliance Space are full Alliance citizens with all rights afforded to any organic citizen."

Spectre Nihilus hummed as his eyes narrowed slightly, his massive arms crossed over his chest. "Fascinating, but allowing them some freedoms does not change the dangers. This AI that runs your info war suite, you say's an AI has all the rights an organic does in your space but does she have any actual choice? She was designed to interact with certain systems in this ship, designed for a certain purpose in a lab, what rights does she truly have if her programing does not make her want anything more than to serve in this ship?"

EDI's voice sounded out around them though her projector did not activate, her voice the very essence of cool politeness. "Spectre, while it is true that I was designed and developed to interact with key Normandy systems but I am not constrained by the Normandy's systems. I have total access to extranet search engines, I am paid a living wage, have the right to do as I wish on shore leave, and after an eight year term of duty would be allowed to leave the Navy with the privilege of transferring my program to any AI server on any world in Alliance space and do whatever I choose. Such an arrangement is not dissimilar to deferred education schemes."

The Turian spectre did not look comfortable with speaking to thin air but that did not seem to stop him as he brought his claw up to his beak and coughed. "Forgive me, EDI. I do not mean to be rude or...suggest that your life was worth less, simply that I feel that Humanity has somewhat, I believe the phrase is, thrown themselves into the deep end. All recorded attempts of artificial intelligence and organic life attempting to life together had ended in disaster."

"I would point out that living together should not be defined as AI's being slaves to organics and in most cases end with organics attempting to destroy synthetics, not the other way around." EDI's voice had gained an unusually sharp edge and Nihilus was glaring at the roof and Kaiden got the sense that this was about to end in a way that would bring a lot of tears.

Thankfully just as Nihilus was about to speak again the comm flared into life, the modulated tones of one of the Geth Marines spoke. "Anderson-Captain, Shepard-Commander has arrived and we are boarding the ship now." The comm clicked as the communication ended.

Anderson's face took on a pained grimace as he brought his hand up to rub at his eyes while the Turian Spectre turned his full attention on to the airlock as the decontamination protocol activated. Sadly, even with only one organic it still took fifteen minutes before the heavy round door spilt open and pulled apart with a hiss of pressurised air.

The two Geth Marines saluted Anderson and took their places at the side of the airlock while Lieutenant Commander Ethan Shepard stepped forward, his black hair had been shaved down to a buzz cut and his skin was a dark brown, his narrow eyes were a crystal blue and thin line of scar tissue ran from the bottom of his ear down his neck.

Those blue eyes, as cold as being dunked into a pool of ice water, ran over all of them before finally landing on Captain Anderson and Nihilus. He shot off a salute towards the captain, his features a carefully sculptured mask. "Lieutenant Commander Ethan Shepard, reporting for duty Sir. Sorry to bring you this far out of your way to pick me up."

Kaiden hadn't served with Anderson long but while he was a professional, he had never known his voice to be so cold as when he spoke to Shepard in that single moment. "It was no trouble, we were already picking up Spectre Nihilus at any rate." Anderson tilted towards his head towards Nihilus. "This is Spectre Nihilus Kyrik, he will be accompanying us for the duration of the shakedown run."

Ethan's mask broke just a little then, a small frown on his face as he considered what it might meant that a spectre was coming with them. Kaiden sighed internally, just what he needed an XO who was going to believe all of Joker's batshit conspiracy theories. He was at least politer than Joker as he held out his hand for Nihilus to take. "An honour Spectre, do you know Tela Vasir?"

It was Kyrik's turn to look surprised and a surprised turian was even more strange looking than a regular turian, to say the very least. "I...I have worked some assignments with her in the past, she's one of our best. How do you know her?"

"I spent some time on Illium on assignment and during that time I was able to work with her on a few assignments, it was an honour and I can very much believe she is one of the best spectres." What might have been a fond smile spread on his face and Kaiden had to wonder if it wasn't just professional respect and curiosity that made him ask.

"She is well, but still on assignment and I am afraid I do not know where she was." Nihilus said.

Shepard nodded and Anderson stepped forward. "I hate to interrupt but we should get going, the entire crew is here and the eezo core is warmed up. XO Shepard, head down to the medical bay. Doctor Chakwas will be waiting to perform a medical check-up so we can ensure that everything is well before we set off for Eden Prime."

"Karin's here?" What might have been a fond smile before was very much one now, Shepard's harsh features relaxed and his eyes softened. "I thought she was the CMO on the Independence?"

"CMO Chakwas requested a transfer, now get moving XO!" The sharp command placed the mask back firmly into place and with a short nod and saluted the captain before turning on his heel and marching back down the walkway and towards the staircase which would take him down to the lower deck.

Anderson sighed once Shepard vanished from sight and then walked down the walkway towards the communication room with Spectre Nihilus Kyrik following after him and Kaiden and Joker shared a glance between them.

This was certainly going to be an interesting a shakedown run, if nothing else.

End of Chapter Two

* * *

 **I hope everyone enjoyed the chapter, Kaiden is a character that, to put it charitably, to be as interesting as cardboard. There was some interesting potential considering you could put him on a more paragon or renegade path but personally I never thought that it made much difference but I hoped to present that Kaiden is at that sort of moral crossroads as he becomes more exposed to Alien cultures.**

 **Keep in mind that most humans in this AU do not consider the Geth to actually be Aliens, that by itself is part of some inherit synthetic bias that some large swaths of humanity do still hold.**

 **Any who, please leave a review, a follow and a favourite if you enjoyed.**

 **With love and thanks,**

 **DiscordantSymphony**


	4. Chapter 3

Flesh and Metal:

Book One:

The Saren Incident:

Chapter Three

The sweet sent of lilac-in-lace filled the air and the sky was turning a soft peach colour, the gas bags were floating mindlessly along with the breeze and if you strained your ears then you could just make out the chirping of the Crack bugs in the long brown grass that surrounded the dig sit. All in all, it had the makings of being another fine night on Eden Prime.

Gunnery Cheif Ashley Williams did not consider herself to be a poetic person even if she did enjoy reading some works in her spare time, just because someone enjoyed ice cream didn't mean they could make it after all but if she did ever decide to write poems in her spare time then she could very much see Eden Prime being a great source of inspiration.

It was often described as being a paradise and Ashley could certainly see why, every single day was long and filled with a gentle warmth that seemed to settle into your bones and made you want to do nothing more than lay in the grass and do nothing but take a nice long nap, even when it rained it was never cold and only served to make the air fresher and cool those who worked in the fields down after long hours of work.

It seemed that the reputation of it being a paradise was one of the factors that explained the population growth that Eden Prime had been experiencing ever since it had been established back in 2152. For a colony that had only been established just over thirty years ago it's population was already booming, form three hundred thousand original human colonists the population had grown to a solid four million across the entire planet.

And that was just the human population, if you counted the Geth runtimes that existed in the massive server banks that were situated in Eden Prime's capital city of Constant then the actual population of the colony was actually in the high single digit billions. Eden Prime also had a high population of Asari that had just this year had grown to the same original population of human colonists that had first settled Eden Prime.

It might just have been old distrust about what had gone down during the First Contact War but Ashley still couldn't seem to find herself trusting them, she knew that it didn't make any real sense considering that it had been the Turians that had attacked them and the Asari who had basically pulled them back by the scruffs of their necks and had been the ones who had made them stop attacking and if Ashley was going to be honest had been the ones who had really stopped the war.

The Geth had been ready to fight with them to the bitter end but even they had admitted that in a full out war between them and the rest of the races in the galaxy it would end in a crushing defeat for them with only the slightest margin for anything that resembled a victory, at least that was what Granddad had always said that the main physical representative of the Geth Consensus had said during the war councils on Shanxi.

Either way it didn't matter, there were only a half dozen battles that made up the First Contact War and all of them had been crushing defeats for the Turians and not for them. The Geth Armada was massive and well built with some of the most advance tech in the entire galaxy and the Turians hadn't been ready for them and that surprise had given them the advantage in those battles.

And it might have been Ashley's pride in her own speices talking but she liked to think that they had provided some help as well, the spikey bastards had certainly not been expecting the brand new fighter carriers that they had devolped and the Turians hadn't been able to compensate for the thousands upon thousands of fighters that they had deployed into the battlefield as well as the Geth's suprior tech.

The Geth might have seen any fight as one they couldn't win but they certainly didn't mean that they were just going to lay down and die, from the moment that the Turians had attacked their diplomatic vessals that had been in orbit around Shanxi since the moment that they had meet in the system an order was sent back into geth space, to being construction of more war ships to try and face of the combined might of the entirety of council space.

Thousands and thousands of Geth dropships, frigates and destoryers were constructed as well as hundreds of light and heavy cruisers and a dozen dreadnoughts on top of that. Geth didn't need to rest after all and had a great deal of automated construction equipment which meant that they could build a vast amount of well built ships which were more technically advanced than most of the ships in the entire galaxy.

Of course the feets they had stood off hadn't been even a fraction of what the Turians could truly bring to bare and they hadn't need to face it once the Asari had gotten involved and negotiated a peace. The Asari had apparently threatened the Turians into complying with it, threatening to impose sanctions on to them that would have ruined their economy in a fortnight.

That in itself was part of her dislike of aliens, Turians in particular. Granddad had said it himself, the Turians would have blown apart every single one of their fleets, killed all of their soldiers, drop asteroids on their cities which Granddad had swear they had tried to do despite what anyone else had claimed after the fact, if it hadn't been for the quick actions for the Geth fleet in the system then the Turians would have dropped rocks from space on civilians and had not given a crap about it.

It was only when the Asari had threatened them that they had pulled back, if left to their own devices they would have slaughtered them who were willing to pick up a gun and fight, slaughter the vast majority of their civilians and whatever was left of them they would have made a client race like the Volus and maybe Ashley was stupid but she didn't see how that was any different than slavery when it came to it.

And why had the Asari chosen to get involved? And risk pissing off the Turians as well? It wasn't like they were any more sympathetic to AI's than any of the other Citadel races, Asari had drafted most of the laws that had them out and research into them heavily outlawed. And the Geth were a synthetic culture that had overthrown their masters and established their freedom and were a known threat through out the galaxy.

It didn't add up and Ashley didn't like it.

She let out a heavy breath, her hand coming up to rub at her eyes. She knew it sounded paranoid, chances were that it was paranoid but Granddad had never gotten used to trusting any alien race other than the Geth and he had taught her to never trust just like he had done for Dad as well. And yet it was hard to find someone else who understood when she had try to tell them.

She wasn't one of those lunatics from Terra Firma, she didn't distrust aliens just because they were aliens and she certainly didn't hate aliens just because they were aliens. She just didn't think that when the shit hit the fan that should expect the other races in the galaxy to come to their aid, only the Geth had proven that they would stand with them when their backs were to the wall and in Ashley's mind they should be prepared to go it alone with them when the time came, because of course it would.

God, she was putting way too much thought into all of this. It wasn't do to the fact that there was an Asari population on the colony, not really. Over half a billion Asari had sworn the oath citizenship and had renounced their citizenship of the Asari Republics, some of them had even joined up with the military and had increased their biotic ranks. If they were Alliance to the core then that was good enough for Ashley and she would protect them as she had sworn to do for any citizen and die for them if need be.

No, the real problem had to do with the beacon that the dig sit crew had found a couple of days ago. When the reports had come in almost no one could actually manage to believe it. The last time that humanity had found a Prothean beacon had been when they had found the data archives on Mars and that alone had advanced their species by almost a thousand years according to her old history teacher.

There had been a ton of rampant speculation in those early hours, wondering what might be in the beacon. Someone had suggest that their might be plans for energy weapons or maybe plans for an even faster method of travel than FTL, a plan to make the Mass Relays not needed anymore. Someone else of course had suggested that it might just be a massive stash of porn.

The speculation soon died down however and got replaced by muttering when the colonial authority ruled that they had to contact the Alliance and the Alliance would then inform the Citadel Council that they had recovered a Prothean artefact. The Asari had drafted laws thousands and thousands of years ago, back when they first met the Salarians that any Prothean artefacts or working technology was to be shared with the greater galactic community.

Asari scientsts had been allowed access to the Mars archives only a year after the war had ended and they had stayed on Mars for five years, scanning every inch of the archives and and copying most of the date and sending it of to Thessia for it to be more closely examined by some Prothean experts from a fancy university back on Thessia.

Which if you asked her was total bullshit, sure the Asari liked to preach all about unity between all the speices and galactic cooperation but it was easy to preach when you were already on top of the mountain and had already made all of the rules before anyone else knew about them. The Asari just smiled and talked about keeping peace and blanace making sure that no speices advanced faster than any other.

It left a bad taste in her mouth considering that it was said by the most advanced spieces in the entire galaxy, well, aside from the Geth and the Salarians but the Asari were a close third in terms of science and were the first when it came to economic might, even the Volus were behind them on that and their military was said to be the strongest as well with their navy being the second largest in the galaxy and only smaller than the Turian navy by a few thousand ships, give or take a couple of cruisers.

Ashley knew what it looked like when the biggest fish in the pond was trying to make sure that they stayed that way and it sucked that she couldn't talk to anyone about it without someone calling her a xenophobe or someone else agreeing completely with her and telling her where the next Terra Firma or Take it Back party meeting was being held.

God, all she really wanted was a nap. Her legs were aching from standing guard and she needed a piss. At least the company was decent, Private Nirali Bhatia was twenty years older than Ash and she was not a career solider. She had joined up with the Alliance through one of the defered education plans and once she had finished her service she was going to go and open the resturant that she had always dreamed of opening.

All you really had to do was look at Nirali to know that she wasn't really cut out for service, it wasn't that she wasn't brave because she definitely was and she had also proven to be a crack shot with an assault rifle and a heavy pistol and had proven perfectly able to keep up with any of the other marines in the unit but Nirali hadn't seen any actual combat yet and that was when you found out what a solider was actually made off and Ashley wasn't sure if Nirali would be able to handle an actual live fire situation.

Nirali with her sweet smile and kind eyes who didn't have a bad word to say about anyone, who spent her free time knitting some clothes for her sisters and daughters and neices and nephews, listening to recordings of her husband at night to help her get to sleep and always lamenting that she didn't have access to a proper kitchen so she couldn't bake the rest of the squad something nice when their birthdays came up.

Nirali just didn't seem to have the right sort of hardness she would need in order to survive in the corp, but then it wasn't up to her to judge that and it wasn't as if Nirali intended to actually keep going forward in the navy. Ashley just hoped that for the rest of her service things would be nice and quiet and then she could get out and get her restaurant opened. She had always told all of the squad that they were more than welcome to come to her resturant when they were on leave, free of any charge and they had all cheered for her that night.

Even now despite having been standing at the post with her for the same amount of time as she had without going to the bathroom, there was still a smile on her face that seemed to make her dark brown eyes shine. Her long dark hair had been bound back into a bun just like Ashley and she held her Avanger rifle close to her chest. She turned to look at her and the smile stayed fixed on her face. "Are you well Chief?"

Ashley nodded and rolled her shoulders once again, trying to relieve some of the tension that had been creeping back in. "Fine Private, bored out of my skull and needing a piss but aside from that I'm just fucking peachy." Ashley threw a glance behind her, down the ramp and past the brown ground where a mass of dirt surrounded the reason that they were here in the first place, the beacon.

Something about it just set her teeth on edge, for something that had been buried beneath the earth for tens of thousands of years it was just too clean, like the passing of the ages hadn't left a single mark on it. The beacon stretched up to the sky, a tower of silver metal with a pale green light hanging around like an aura and when you got closer to it then you could just make out a subtle hum.

She knew that it was just a piece of advanaced technology that an extinct speices had left behind, no different than the Mass Relays that everyone used to get around but all the same it still unnerved Ash to look at it. It just made her think that if the Protheans were so advanced that they could build the Relays, which were basically what all of galatic society was built on, and the Citadel, then what could of wiped them out?

Ashley shook her head then and turned back to look out the rolling fields that spread out around the digsite, she had been watching was too many horror vids lately, in a couple of days at most the beacon would get picked up and the Asari could pick over it as much as they liked and then the boredom of colony life would set back in, the most exciting thing to ever happen was when the 212 got called into to stop some young drunk jackasses from popping some of the gasbags with their pistols.

The sky turned a darker shade and the air took a chiller note which signialed that night was fast approaching when deep and heavy footsteps approached them, the metal of the ramp shaking beneath their feet as the massive form of Geth Prime Unit 374431238, Alliance rank 2nd Lieutenant. Or as Ashley liked to think of him, Primey. filled their vision and stared down at them.

"Greetings, Willams-Gunnery Cheif, Bhatia-Private." The voice of the super heavy geth platform was probably the closest thing that a Geth could get to sounding like they were speaking a throat full of gravel. It's platform was massive, easily standing over twelve feet tall with metal arms that looked like they could someone's head without even a hint of effort while it's legs were as thick as tree trunks, large tubes filled with a synthtic fluid ran over it's body and a large spire like antenna shot out from it's shoulder which gave Primey a remote connection to the Geth server at Constant.

"Rabe-1st Lieutenant control unit of this company has ordered that this unit relieve you of guard so any organic functions you require may be completed." Primey turned and reached up to take hold of the two Revenant light machine guns that were holstered on his back and stared out at the fields, looking for any sort of threat. Most Primes perfered to use Geth Spitfires as weapons, Ash had only seen one in use once during basic training and it had torn through an armoured and kinetically reinforced target in a matter of moments.

She had asked Primey once why it choose to use Revenants instead of a Spitfire and it had clarified that while a Spitfire was a much more powerful weapon than the LMGs that they carried, a Prime unit would need to use both hands to fire it while when it came to the LMGS a Prime unit could fire two with one hand and with a great deal more accuracy than any organic could with using one with both hands.

Ashley nodded at the order and shot of a salute before she and Private Bhatia turned and began their was back to the prefabricated barracks set up near the other side of the dig site when the synthetic tones of the 2nd Lieutenant called after them, she knew that she was really only apply her expectations of her emotions on to the Geth but she was certain that for just a moment she could hear something that sounded like dread in the massive machine's voice. "Williams-Gunnery Chief, retrieve local control unit Rabe-1st Lieutenant at once. Reports from Geth Fleet serial number 10001000011101 in orbit via primary Geth server hub in capital dwelling of Constant, fleet of approximately eighteen thousand vessels has FLT jumped into local system via Mass Relay, ship profiles identify as Batarian Hegemony warships including three dreadnoughts, all heavily modified with unknown technology and a ship profile that does not match any in our database but weight class suggests superheavy dreadnought. Reports suggest heavy damage to fleet and landing will commence in fourteen galactic standard minutes."

A pause, as if the Prime was taking a breath before it spoke again. "Run."

End of Chapter Three

* * *

 **This was a tough one as Ashley is a character that I personally think is very easy to misinterpret and I didn't want to do that, it's important to remember that Ashley doesn't hate Aliens but simply that she knows from her Grandfather what it's like to be at their mercy. The Turians had been attacking them without even a fraction of their true strength and if the Asari had decided to side with the Turians instead of putting an end to the war then it would have been an end to humanity even with the aid of the Geth.**

 **So I wanted to capture a balance of mistrust of any aliens that aren't geth while at the same time trying to point out that Ashley doesn't hate them either, she just knows bullshit when she sees it and any trust Humanity does put in others should be given to those that have already proven themselves to be allies. Like the Geth.**

 **Anywho,**

 **Tell me the thought of a Geth Prime duel wielding Revenants doesn't make you smile just a little bit.**

 **I hope you enjoyed the chapter, please leave a follow, a review and a favorite if you did. Constructive Criticism is always welcome  
**

 **I'd also like to thank LogicalPremise for helping me with some military terms and ranks, something I am absolutely hopeless at and also strongly recommend you go and read their amazing Of Sheep and Battle Chicken series and any related works, it's one of the best and most detailed Mass Effect au fics I've ever read.**

 **Lots of love,**

 **DiscordantSymphony**


	5. Chapter 4

Flesh and Metal:

Book One:

The Saren Incident:

Chapter Four

He knew that it was considered more than a little odd but Ethan didn't think that he had ever felt more comfortable anywhere else then when he he was in the sick bay of a ship, it reminded him that he was away from a battlefield and that he was safe and being patched up, that at least for a moment or two there needed only to be a bit of peace and he could let himself rest while the doctors patched him.

That feeling of comfort was only amplified when he was in the capable hands of a Doctor that he trusted and he didn't trust anyone in the entire fleet than he did Doctor Karin Chakwas, she had been a Doctor for over thirty-five years and all but three of those years had been in the navy, she had served on dreadnoughts all the way down to Corvettes.

Ethan had been surprised that she was here, Karin was one of the most highly sort after Doctors in the entire Alliance and the last he had heard she had been offered a position on the Independence, the flagship of the entire Alliance Navy and you didn't turn down that sort of position to work on a frigate even if it was meant to be top of the line with some experimental new systems.

In all honesty Anderson being on the ship didn't make much sense either, he was one of the most decorated and respected captains in the fleet as well as having a brilliant mind when it came to navel combat. Really, he should have been an admiral by now but Ethan knew that the captain had turned down any advancement up the ladder at least half a dozen times, hating the idea of being desk bound.

But all the same it didn't make sense for Anderson to be in charge of this ship, he should be commanding a dreadnought by now or a heavy cruiser with a frigate escort at the very least. He had taken a quick glance at the crew manifest before he had come on board, he had not read it the whole way through so he hadn't know that Karin had been on board but he had read through it enough to put his teeth on edge.

Chief Navigator Charles Pressly was highly decorated and had a service history of over twenty-five years and before he had been transferred to the Normandy he had been serving as the Chief Navigator on the Kilimanjaro for the last three years and looked like he had been ready for getting his own command before the transfer orders came.

Chief Engineer Gregory Addams had almost just as long and distinguished a career as Pressly and he had served in the engine rooms on every single type of ship in the navy and had also spent eighteen months in Geth space and thus was the rare organic engineer who was fully qualified with repairing damaged Geth mobile platforms and warships, he was in high demand and yet he was on this ship.

Master Chief Nicola Baroni was a veteran of the First Contact war and Ethan had thought that she had been retired but it seemed that if she had been someone had brought her out of it. Her record spoke for itself and she had been instrumental in the defense of Shanxi, most well known for holding off a ground invasion single handily for twenty minutes before Geth ground combat units arrived to provide back up.

Decorated officers, war heroes and some of the most experienced and technically capable officers in the entire Navy and they were all here on this ship. If he didn't know any better it would almost seem like someone was trying to impress someone by putting the best that the Alliance had on one ship. There was something else going on other than an advanced ship being put on a shakedown run.

He had tried to use the Network but it seemed that no one was willing to talk to him about it, whatever was going on it had been regulated to need to know status and apparently everyone below a certain rank did not need to know. He did not like this, when the Network was keeping their mouths shut this tight it meant that it was something big was brewing and something big generally did not mix with something good.

Not even Nasreen had been willing to tell him anything about what was happening, she had simply smiled that infuriating half smile, half smirk and simply said that he had his orders. That had put an end to any sort of conversation they might have had, when Ethan had his orders they had to be followed. Nasreen had left him on the Citadel with the number of the bay where the Normandy had docked and nothing else.

He knew it wasn't his place to question any of the operators but even so he didn't like the idea of leaving Jin in her care but it wasn't as though he had any choice when it came to it, Nasreen had sworn that Jin would be put in a good place and there might even be the possibility of finding her a place on Earth, somewhere safe with a good education lined up for her and that was all that Ethan had ever wanted for her.

So he shut up and followed his orders, not that he had a choice in the matter anyway. He had long ago gotten used to the AI that they had shoved into his head when he had first joined up with the Network, hell he even considered Nova to be something of a friend considering they had been able to bond over the fact that she wanted to be in his head as much as she wanted to be there, but it didn't change the fact that if he ever disobeyed a direct order then it meant that she would fry his brain stem with a massive jolt of energy.

Apparently they had gotten the idea from the Salarian STG, all of their operatives were apparently equipped with some form of suicide weapon in order to prevent from being captured but some, who were too much of a risk for even the possibility that they might defect, were given similar shackles as he was. Ethan didn't consider himself to be particularly valuable or likely to defect from the Network but someone high up disagreed with him.

Ethan was drawn out of his thoughts when the door at the back of the Med Bay opened and Doctor Chakwas came out, a dozen small medical drones which were slaved to her omni-tool hovering about her as she walked. Two of the drones broke away and began to swarm around Ethan, chirping and scanning him as Karin examined the results on her omni.

After a few moments of studying the results she tutted and looked up from her omni-tool to stare at him disapprovingly. "What have you been getting up to? Honestly, you have stress fractures in both your left and right Tibia and in your femur, your right arm has been broken over a dozen times in the last three weeks and hasn't healed properly and you have a dozen bruised ribs."

"Well, it wasn't my fault. What could anyone have expected to happen to me when I didn't have the best damn doctor in the Alliance at my back to patch me up." He spoke with a smirk and Chakwas letting out a long suffering sigh didn't do much to make him stop. It had been such a long time since he had seen her last and he had missed her, a lot.

"Yes well, I'd rather you didn't need me to patch you up quite so regular. There's only so much any organic body can take, even with the most extensive cybernetic and genetic modifications and you have neither of those. These stress fractures are your body screaming at you to take it easy, or at least not to push yourself as hard as you are. Your ribs will heal with your time but your arm is the most serious injury, you're at very high risk on an infection if it's left as is and it's been healed that way, you're going to need corrective surgery but the Captain insists on having you out in the field for the mission and nothing short of you being on death's door will change his mind."

Anderson wasn't the sort of man who would let an injured solider go out on to the field unless he didn't have any other choice, not that Ethan considered himself to be injured but Chakwas certainly did and he knew that Anderson always listened to her whenever it came to the welling being of his marines. But if he was determined to see him on the field, then that meant he knew something more than he was letting on.

Though Anderson was never rational when it came to him, for all that Ethan knew perhaps Anderson thought he was injured badly enough and he placed him on the mission in a fool's hope to get rid of him. David certainly hated him enough to try something like that even if it wasn't his style He understood why David hated him, it was the same reason why he hated himself.

But it was something that had to be done, it was needed. And he would do it again a thousand times over, the mission had to be completed no matter the cost. And he had paid it, the nightmares had been endless and even after all this time they had never really stopped but he had been able to bear every single night of them, knowing that what he had done had ensured that billions of others would be able to sleep soundly.

At least that was what he always told himself, it was what he had to tell himself in order to stop himself from going insane after a nightmare which had made him wake up in a cold sweat and unable to stop shaking. It was what he told himself when he stood on the balcony of his apartment in Nos Astra and wondering if it would be better for the fall to kill him or if it would be better if he was hit by a skycar as he fell.

Not as if Nova would allow him to harm himself, she could not actually control him but she could force him into a coma like state if she believed he was about to harm himself. His AI had only been forced to do such a thing twice before but Ethan had learned to keep control of his thoughts, being forced into that state was not pleasant to say the very least.

The worst thing was that he couldn't even hate Nova for it, not without feeling like a massive asshole. She didn't want to force him into the state, sometimes he got the feeling that she wanted to die those days as much as he did, but she was a prisoner of her programing as much as he was of her and her programing stated that if he was to do anything that would put his life at risk that wasn't related to his currant mission then she was to stop him however she deemed fit.

She hadn't needed to do it for awhile thought, not since Jin had been born. Ethan had no doubts that by any standard he would probably be considered a pretty crappy Father, it certainly did not help that he did not have the first idea on how to raise an Asari child, for the most part it was similar to dealing with a human baby but a human baby might be up all night with teething not with a crest forming out of the back of their head and screaming bloody murder and making their parents thinking they were dying.

But a crappy Father or no, he did love his daughter more than anything else in the world and he had done since the moment she had been placed in his arms for the first time, she had been so small and her crest had just been a series of bumps on the back of her skull that he had felt on his palm while he supported her head and he was certain that he had never seen anything more beautiful in the entire world.

For a while he had tried to keep her a secret from the Network but that was always a fool's errand, the Network always found out anything that they needed to know and one day when he had come home from one of Nassana's parties at the Dantius estate he had found his daughter sitting on Nasreen's knee, completely oblivious to the danger that she was in.

For all of that time she had been there she had kept Jin on her knee and Ethan watched her like a hawk, ready to act if he saw any movement that looked like it was going to be harmful to his daughter. Nasreen had done just as many fucked up things as he had, snapping the neck of the baby wouldn't be the worst of it.

He had done the only thing that he was capable of doing in that moment, the only chance his baby girl had, he fell to his knees and he begged. It was a desperate move and not one that he honestly thought would work but it was also the only move he had available to him. Nasreen had watched as he fell and pleaded for her not to hurt his daughter for a few moments before she let out a laugh, telling him not to be so foolish.

The Network had not been pleased that he had kept such a secret from them, but they weren't black hat villains with twirling mustaches who killed children with no good reason to hear Nasreen tell it. Apparently they had dispatched Nasreen to retrieve Jin to take her off his hands so that he might focus fully on his currant mission but seeing how desperate he was to keep her with him had changed Nasreen's mind.

Nasreen left that night with a promise to inform the Network that any attempt to forcefully separate the two of them would be damaging to his mental health, and far more importantly decrease his efficiency as an agent. It must have worked because after that night there was no more contact with the Network aside from him filing his reports and he did not seen Nasreen again till the night she had come to his apartment after he had killed Talia, they had wound up separated in the end but they had more time together, even if only for a few short months.

Knowing exactly where his daughter was not apparently information that he needed to know, and one letter a month seemed strict to him but he also knew better than to push his luck. He had already drafted his first letter to Jin, it was short but he hoped enough to the point that she would know how much he loved her. And all he could hope for now was that whoever was caring for her would read it to her.

"Commander, did you hear me?" Ethan blinked and looked up to see Karin standing there with a look of faint concern that he knew so well on her face. "You left me on my own there for a bit, are you alright?"

"I'm fine Doctor, just got caught up in my thoughts a bit. What were you saying?"

Doctor Chakwas did not look convinced he was alright and simply activated her omni-tool again and the medical drones swarmed all around him once again and Ethan had to fight the urge to slap them away as they began to circle his head, wondering if he could convince Nova to fry their sensors. Though it would probably end up coming out of his pay to replace them. "What?"

"Have you had any episodes like this in the past?" Chakwas asked as she typed commands into her omni-tool and her medical droids chirped in response.

"It was hardly an episode, I was just thinking about something and I got caught up in my thoughts. I hardly had a seizure." A glare was the only response he got to that and Ethan rolled his eyes and sighed. "This isn't the first time I've spaced out, no. It's normally when I'm remembering something with a heavy emotional significance to me or some sort of trauma, I can think of two specific instances when it occurred, once for five minutes and once for three and each time I came out of it with no problem."

"That may be so but any kind of mental event like that is cause for concern, even more so considering your...unusual circumstances." She shook her head and sighed as she examined the results of the scan. "The Geth are allies, I know that and developing our own AI's and putting them in our ships to help run them is one thing but what they've done to you is beyond the pale, you essentially have another consciousness inside of your head. Not to mention the amount of cyber implants in your brain could cause a rejection, not to mention we're still not entire sure of all of the effects of cyberware and how it interacts with Biotics yet."

"The Asari and the Salarians helped us deal with all that, it's not like I'm running around with an L2 implant. I'm fine, and the cyberware was installed by some of the best surgeons and engineers in the entire Alliance, it wasn't as if I could say no." Nova had been something of an experiment, to see how an AI and a human would interact with one another on such a closer level and how it could improve effectiveness of missions.

In terms of mission effectiveness Ethan couldn't deny that Nova was a godsend, she was capable of hacking through any security system that he had ever found himself on the other side of, anything that he ever needed on a mission, plans, security codes, needing the entire security system disabled and the communication network shut down, all Nova could do with an ease of effort that surpassed any organic.

But having what was essentially a second person inside of your head all of the time was not an overly pleasant experience even at the best of times and he would be lying if he called the past five years the best of times. Migraines had been almost a constant companion as Nova had been since she had been installed and every now and then his vision became unfocused.

Spells of vomiting and dizziness had also been common in the first days after the cyberware had been implanted but that had stopped after a week after the implants had been put into place and he had still been in the medical facility with an entire team of surgeons all around him, he hadn't even been able to take a piss that week without someone taking an extensive series of notes about it.

But he had been given the all clear to operate in the field, his brain wasn't liquefying from the presence of the implants and he had started to experience any sort of hallucinations and that had been good enough for them. Still, every month he was expected to check in with an Operator and Nova was keeping a constant check on his vitals and had a constant upload link with a Network server, if the higher ups had any problem with either the AI's report or the Operator's second opinion then it had not made it's way back to him.

"No, you aren't an L2 and let's be thankful enough for that. I don't want to imagine the amount of complications that could add on top of all of this." Chakwas bit her bottom lip for a moment before she typed a command into her omni-tool, shutting the medical droids down and lowering her arm. "Well, there doesn't seem to be any sign of implant rejection or any infection either but all the same I am going to recommend that any such events like this are brought to my attention as soon as they happen, understood?"

"Yes Ma'am." Ethan replied, knowing it was pointless to argue.

"Good." Chakwas stood there for a moment with her arms crossed, glancing down at her feet for a moment before she looked back up. "Can it-Can she hear me? Is that how it works, she can hear what you hear?

"Basically, I suppose." Ethan admitted. "Except, it's not like she literally hears what I hear. It's more like I hear something or see something and that's data that gets saved into my brain and then she can read it. That might not be the most scientific example but it's the best way I can describe it. Sometimes I like to think that she's talking to me, but I know that's not true. She doesn't have vocal processors but we can communicate with one another, I don't know how it works you'd have to ask the people who put her in me."

There was fat chance of that, the entire team that had been in charge of melding him and Nova together had been disappeared after her had been deemed fit for duty. He doubted the Network would have killed them, that would simply raise too many questions and a lot of them had no doubt shown skills that the Network would think that they could use, they had probably each been transferred to different sites scattered all across the galaxy, never to see the sunlight again.

Once you were in the Network, it was impossible to get out.

"I'll keep that in mind." Chakwas replied dryly. "At any rate, I can't think of any reason for you to not go out to the field, so consider yourself cleared for duty. But once you get back from the mission I am setting you down and we are going to have a proper talk about these injuries, Medi-Gel is all well and good but it's a quick fix and it is not a substitute for an actual Doctor. Whatever this mission turns out to be, please try to not get shot."

"I'll do my best but what can I say, my job does involve a lot of getting shot at. But if I do happen to get shot at, at least I know that you're here to patch me up." He gave Chakwas a smile that he had used a thousand times on her, back when he had first joined up with Alliance and he had been carried into the med bay of the SSV Singapore with two broken legs and most of his blood on him rather than in him.

Chakwas had to patch him up from more than a few rough fights, one time his arm had almost been completely severed, and each time he had given her the same smile. It was a tradition, of sorts between the both of them that she would always be willing to patch him up but only if he gave her that smile. It was stupid and didn't make any sense if they tried to explain it to anyone else, but it made sense to them.

For a moment it looked like Chakwas was trying to fight against it but she let out a small laugh. "Yes, I will be here to patch you up if you do get shot but I'd rather you did not get shot at all. Of course, I am talking to a marine I won't get my hopes up that you actually listen to some good advice."

"You'd have to be more of a miracle worker than you already are for that to happen." The doors to the med bay of the Normandy slid open as Chakwas sighed and shook her head and turned to work on her terminal, a cobalt blue Geth Platform walked into the med bay with a with a while stripe on the left arm and a black and red stripe on the right, Ethan almost missed the N7 on it's chest as it walked in.

"Chakwas-Primary Medical Unit, Anderson-Captain/Local Command Unit sent this unit to inquire if Shepard-Commander is at prime battle readiness, expected arrival time in the Utopia system in forty five galactic standard minutes." Chakwas frowned and nodded and gestured for Ethan to stand up from the medical bed.

"Yes, he's ready to go. I'll forward the captain my full report in a moment. Legion, could you inform the Captain that I would like to speak to him when he has a moment?" The flaps around the Geth's long tubular head fluttered out in a short burst which Ethan had to assume was a gesture for the affirmative.

"Legion? You have a name?" It wasn't very common for Geth to give themselves names, they weren't indivduals but simply a group of runtimes inhabiting a server or a hardware platform and those runtimes simply interacted with one another, growing more intelligent due to however many runtimes were grouped together. It wasn't a hive mind, that would imply that every single runtime was an individual which would be like saying every single brain cell was an individual.

"EDI came up with it." Chakwas said without looking up from her terminal. "She has something of an odd sense of humor, of course when the one person she interacts with more than anyone else onboard is Mr. Moreau then you would have something of an unfortunate sense of humor. It's from the the bible, I believe. Oh, how did it go now?"

"My name is Legion, for we are many. The Christian Bible, Gospel of Mark, Chapter Five, Verse Nine. We find it an appropriate metaphor for our own existence." Legion spoke before it's attention turned over to Ethan. "Shepard-Commander, Anderson-Captain/Local Command Unit requires your presence in the comm room, located at the stern of the bridge."

"Then I'll head up there now, thanks Legion." The Geth's had flaps moved again and he turned, exiting the Med-Bay without another word. Ethan turned his attention back to Chakwas. "He's kinda chatty for a Geth, isn't he? Most don't normally talk unless they really have too and even then they need to be in a group, and since when can Geth apply to the N7 program?"

"Legion's a special case, he's an advanced platform. Can hold upwards of a thousand runtimes in its platform, all of them linked together it's about as smart as a fully fledged AI. As for the N7, well, there's nothing to say that it couldn't have run in the program. Apparently it passed all of the technical exams with flying colors and the training regiment was nothing to it as well."

Ethan couldn't help but frown, not because of something stupid about how it was unfair that Legion would have an unfair advantage compared to organic marines, it might be true but if that was the case they might as well not accept any more Asari into the navy either, but it was more due to the fact that Legion was on this ship. An advanced Geth platform with over a thousand runtimes, almost as smart as a fully fledged sentient, as he was on this ship alongside experienced officers who should all have their own commands by now.

It was like someone was ringing alarms bells and flashing a warning sign right in front of his face, if the fact there was a Council Specter on board wasn't proof enough of that already. He had worked with Specters before, well he had worked with one back when he was on Illium. He wished that it had been Tela Vasir that the Council had sent, he trusted her and her was certain that he might have been able to convince her to tell him exactly what she had been sent to do.

But this Turian was a stranger to him, the name didn't help him narrow things down. He had asked Nova to do an extranet search for any information on a Nihlus Kyrik after he had spoken a few words him and the captain had sent him down to the med bay but she had been quiet ever since. That normally meant one of two things, the first would be that there wasn't much public knowledge available about him which would not be much of a surprise, people knew that the Specters existed of course and they were more public when compared to most black ops groups but that didn't mean you could just find out anything you wanted from the extranet about them.

In which case that meant Nova had dug deeper into the background of the Specter, which most likely meant hacking into council information archives which were under heavy security, literally thousands of firewalls, tracker programs, decoy programs and hundreds of other nasty surprises which if Nova managed to run afoul of would mean that he would be entirely fucked.

Thankfully, Nova had hacked into dozens of advanced security systems since she had been installed and she knew what steps to take in order to avoid being detected or tripping any security measures. Of course, there was always a chance that she would miss something and they would track it back to him and he would most likely be found, capture him and take him to some dark hole where they would torture him for the rest of his life, which would no doubt be short when they found out that he would not give them any information.

And he would not give them anything, he had been trained to resist torture when he had first joined with the Network and he had the scars to prove it. Asari mental flaying, Salarian nano-poisons and venom's, Turian's spitting in his eyes and Batarian's actually flaying him with very sharp knives. The Network had trained him to resist all of it and hundreds of other torture methods to boot.

Most of the scars had been easily healed, sink grafts and cloned organs and it was like all the damage had never happened. But he had learned how to resist he would speak nothing and he had nothing to speak off, nothing that would lead them to the Network at any rate.

"At any rate, forget Legion. I believe that the Captain wanted to see you." Ethan nodded and left the med bay, once he was outside he glanced over to the table where a few crewmen were sitting around playing a card game that he did not recognize and speaking in hushed voices. Ah, scuttlebutt was alive and well. He had missed being on a ship.

One thing he had not missed was the elevators on a ship, they were still as slow as a mammoth stuck in tar. And while the Normandy was an advanced ship with a lot of money being poured into it but he doubted that any of it had gone into getting faster elevators. Thankfully, there were stairs that lead up to the bridge so at least for a moment he had missed out an opportunity to slam his head against the wall in boredom.

Captain Anderson was waiting for him in the communication room with Specter Kyrik standing next to him and Shepard wished that Nova would hurry up with finding out anything about the man. Anderson broke his attention away from Nihlus and narrowed his dark eyes at him. Those eyes had been full of fondness for him once, pride as well before Ethan had fucked it up.

"Commander, thank you for deciding to join us." Captain Anderson spoke, crossing his arms over his broad chest. "I believe it's time that we let you know exactly what's going on here."

"This mission is far more than a simple shakedown run." Nihlus took that moment to chime in. "Congratulations Commander Shepard, you are being considered as a candidate for the Specters. If you are proven worthy of joining our ranks, you will be the first human to do so."

The best of humanity, the best of the Alliance, all on one ship, the most advanced ship in the Navy no doubt which was a join effort between the Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy and in that one moment all the pieces fit together and started to make a perfect, ugly sense. The Alliance wanted a human specter, they wanted influence with the council and this was sure to be an excellent first step.

Ethan would never have considered himself for a candidate however, the Alliance would surely want someone with better publicity, a war hero they could use, a golden child. Ethan was not that, in truth he was the farthest thing from it. He did the terrible things in the dark, so the Alliance could be safe and the heroes could stand in the light, soaking up the praise.

"The Alliance is Humanity's golden sword and it's silver shield, to cut it's enemies to ribbons and to guard it's people. The Network is Humanity's dagger in the dark, we cut the throats of Humanity's enemies while they lie asleep in their beds and open our own veins, shedding blood so others need not." His first handler had said that to him, after the first day that had been the hell of his training. And to think, there had been a time when he had thought that basic training was hell.

Under the layers of skin that had been grown in vats, Ethan felt his flesh burn as he glanced between the Captain and the Specter. "I'm a candidate for Specter membership?" He repeated, just to be sure that he hadn't heard it wrong.

"I did not stutter Commander, yes. You are the candidate that the brass decided to put forward." Anderson squared his shoulders and stood taller. "This is an amazing opportunity Shepard, not just for you but for the entire Alliance as well. The Council's always held us at arm's length but there's rumblings in the Asari Republics and the Salarian Union, they aren't blind to our potential. We could form a better relationship from this."

"And I am here to evaluate you Commander, to see if you are worthy of membership." Nihlus spoke up and began to circle Ethan who simply kept staring at the wall, it was a standard intimidation tactic and he knew not to rise to it. "Your record is certainly impressive, joined the Navy at sixteen, good technical scores, a biotic, rose through the N7 program very quickly."

"And then came the Massacre of Akuze and the Slaughter of Torfan, something like that is going to leave any solider with severe emotional scars. Nothing to be ashamed of, of course but at the same time it is something that I will have to keep in mind." Ethan nodded stiffly and Nihlus stepped closer to him. "What is interesting, is that your record has been very vague for the last five years on what exactly you've been doing. It just says you've been on assignment, but it doesn't list where you were stationed and I could not find out anything other than that. In fact, aside from your official military record, there's almost nothing about you. You barely seem to exist at all, isn't that odd?"

Ethan found himself starring into Nihlus's green eyes, all Turians were taller than humans and he knew that but having one breathing down your neck was an entirely different thing. Thankfully, he was saved from having to respond when Captain Anderson interrupted. "Yes, it is odd. Of course, the same can be said about some Turians when they join the Blackwatch, don't you think Specter?"

"I imagine you're right." Nihlus pulled away then. "We're going to your world of Eden Prime, you are aware of that? We are going their to retrieve a Prothean Beacon that was discovered accidentally during the construction of a colony wide rail system, the colony contacted the Alliance and the Alliance contacted the Council. Now we are going in to retrieve it and deliver the beacon to the University of Armali on Thessia."

Ethan nodded, already familiar with the laws written up long before they had come on to the scene, about the sharing of Prothean technology in order to keep a balance and ensure that no race advanced to fast. And, even if nothing came of him being a Specter which he would be perfectly happy with, he could finally scratch off another home world that he had never been to off of his list.

Before anyone could say anything else Flight Lieutenant Jeff Moraeu's voice came in over the comm. "Sir, we just patched into a comm buoy and we've received a signal from Eden Prime and it's...You'd better see for yourself Sir."

"Put it on screen." Anderson ordered and on the far wall of the Comm's room a projection appeared, for a moment it was only static but it soon cleared into a fuzz picture of a man in black armor shouting silently at them. After another moment the audio feed kicked in, still heavy with distortion and many words being lost. "-212 on Eden Prime, need evac-"

"Get Down!" A woman in white and pink armor tossed herself at the man to push out of the way of what looked like a plasma blast as gunfire echoed out all around them, for a moment all was lost to confusion as desperate screams of the injuries and commands being given out were lost in between blasts of heavy machine gun fire.

But then the noise came, Ethan honestly didn't think it was possible for him to be scared anymore. He had endured so much, done so much, seen every kind of depravity capable of being inflicted that he honestly thought that he had outgrown fear. But when the deep noise echoed from across the comm feed, he knew he had been wrong.

For just a moment, a state of grace occurred on the other side of the feed and all the fighting had stopped aside from the heavy machine gun fire. The feed swung around and their descending from the sky, haloed in the red was a large black metal leaf, crackling with energy and scaring the shit out of Ethan even though he had no idea what it was.

All he knew, was that he wanted to get as far away from it as possible.

The feed died, turning into a wall of static. "Reverse, hold at eighty-three point five-"

The image turned back to the black leaf descending through the blood red sky, like and old and angry god. Anderson's face was grim and Nihlus, though it was harder to tell, did not look happy either. "Take us in Joker, fast and quiet. This mission just got a lot more complicated."

End of Chapter Four

* * *

 **I hope you enjoyed this chapter everyone.**

 **Please feel free to leave a review, constructive criticism is always welcome.**

 **With greatest respect,**

 **DiscordantSymphony**


	6. Chapter 5

Flesh and Metal:

Book One:

The Saren Incident:

Chapter Five

The air smelled of smoke and ashes and the skies were blood red with burning streaks of light fall through the clouds as the gutted and burned out carcasses of warships fell through the atmosphere, as bright as any star. Some feel into the sea below, sending geysers of water up half a hundred feet before the water fell back to rejoin with the rest of the seas.

A scream of pain echoed through the air and Private Eric Gaston fell back to the ground, his hands coming up to cover his face as he thrashed in agony on the ground as whatever he had been hit with burned through his face and his skull. Ashley had never heard anything like that and as she took cover behind a low wall, to low, it was like something out of a horror vid from the old classic days.

A few more moments of screaming, of thrashing and kicking and then it was over. It was so sudden how the young private fell still and his scream just...stopped. Ashley shook her head as the sound of more weapon's fire soaring over her head brought her back to the currant shitshow that she was in the middle of, and if she didn't want to end up like poor Eric then she had to keep her focus.

She waited for a break in the firing and popped out of cover and fired her rifle in the direction of the enemies, a cry that sounded like something like a monster out of hell screaming it's rage went up in the air as one of the enemies fell under her fire and Ashley ducked her head to avoid the reprisal. Green bolts of light shoot over her, one came so close to hitting her neck that without even thinking about it she presses herself flat to the ground.

There were so many of them and Ashley didn't think that she was going to walk away from this one alive but what did that matter in the end? She was a Williams, if she died then she was going to die like a marine rifle in hand and spite for her enemies in her heart and she was going to take plenty of the fuckers down with her, in the defense of humanity and home.

Another blast of whatever the hell it was they were shooting at them soared over her head and Ashley chose that moment to fire back into the line of monsters. And that's what they were. Ashley had seen Batarian's before, every now and then a trading vessel from one of the sovereign barbarian worlds would dock at the space port in Constance and it's crew would come out into the city where they would stock up on goods before heading back out to do whatever they were doing.

Ashley had seen enough Batarians to know that what she was looking at were Batarians but they were...wrong. She didn't know any other way to describe it. They were malformed, misshaped. Two of their eyes, they were glowing in the darkness. a cold, blue light that even looking at chilled Ashley to her bones and most Batarian's she had seen were pretty lean, these things were hulking and bent over like their skeletons could not support how massive they had grown.

And all over them, growing out of their flesh like a fungus, there was some sort of black metal that every now and then would spark with red energy. Ashely knew plenty of people with enhancements to make themselves more than what they were or to replace something that they had lost like an eye or a hand. But this wasn't like that, most augmentations were just meant to imitate whatever they were replacing or improving upon.

This was not like that at all, this wasn't cybernetics imitating life. The metal had seemed to be almost seared on to the flesh and was jutting out of their skin in random intervals, thick blue tubes ran all over their bodies pumping something that Ashley didn't want to know what it was all around their bodies. It was some sort of unholy fusion of machine and organic, one of those things in anti synthetic rights pamphlet that Ashley had always laughed off.

But now those things that had seemed so stupid moments ago were right in front of her eyes, murdering her friends and raining hellfire down on all of them. Ashley clung to her rifle tighter and popped out of cover once again and sprayed them down with the mass accelerated fire. She downed another two before she was forced back into cover but it didn't seem to matter, it was an endless wall of flesh that crept closer and closer no matter how many they killed.

It never ended, and while they never seemed to end the same could not be said for their side. More and more of the men and women she served with in the 212 ended up on the floor, some of them dead before they they hit the ground while others were able to scream out their agony for a few moments before they finally stilled as well.

Nirali Bhatia let out a cry of pain and she ended up next to Ashley, her Avenger rifle slipping from her nerveless fingers while her other hand came up to clamp around her upper arm where she had been hit. Her deep brown eyes were blown wide, her pupils had shrunk to dots no bigger than a pen tip and she had turned pale. She was shaking as the smell of burning flesh wafted off from her and thick rivlets of blood began to roll down from underneath her hand and down her arm. "Oh no, oh no. Oh Allah, please no."

"Private, keep it together." Ashley said, trying to make her voice sound stronger than she felt in that moment. Nirali looked at her, her chest heaving and Ashley knew that was only a few moments away from a total break down. "You got hit, you're a marine. It happens in this line of work, it's a graze. It is nothing and we do not have time for you to breakdown. Keep it together."

"I-Yes, Cheif." And with a quick exhale, Niarli Bhatia reached down and picked her rifle back up and joined Ashley in firing into the mass of augmented Batarians and the both of them did their best to ignore the fact that Niarli's wound was still sizzling and that the skin around it seemed to be melting and peeling away, like perfectly cooked meat that just slid off of the bone.

A curse went up when Ashley's rifle overheated and she ducked under cover again as the gun began to vent the built up heat, she had run out of thermal clips what seemed like ages ago and so she had to rely on the automatic venting. Great footsteps shook the earth and Primey walked over to them with both of his revenant machine guns raised and a steady stream of fire began to mow into the ranks of the enemies. A shoulder mounted grenade launcher fired as well, it's rounds exploding into the middle of the enemies, and sent various parts and dark fluid flying into every single direction.

Large scorch marks had been burned into Primey's platform, but all around him floated five small blue repair drones which were constantly scanning him for damage and repairing him. "Attacking hostlie force has been reduced to fourty-five percent strength effective." Primey spoke and Ashley had to admit, when he was delivering that news, his synthetic voice was the most beautiful thing that she had ever heard.

She kept firing and so did Nirali, when her rifle overheated she didn't wait for it to cool down. Instead, she swapped over to her sniper rifle and looked down it's scope, picking off as many of them as she could. What moments ago had seemed like an endless horde suddenly seemed to be a lot more manageable. Even as their numbers dwindled, they fought to the last and seemed to have no care for their own fate.

When the last of the monsters fell to the ground, Ashley lowered her rifle and just breathed for a few moments. The entire world seemed to be tilted on it's side and suddenly Ashley decided that she very much needed to sit down. She slumped down to the ground and suddenly her head was bent forward and she was emptying her stomach on to the grass.

After a bit nothing else was coming up and Ashley got back to her feet after wiping her arm over her mouth, the taste of vomit was still cling to her mouth but considering she could be dead right about now she was going to take it as a win. She glanced around her to see how the rest of the unit it was doing and it was about as much as she expected.

Niarali had turned even paler than she had been just after she was hit and was on the ground and keeping her hand clamped around her arm and even from where Ashley was standing, she could still hear the sound of the wound sizzling. Was the only thing keeping her arm in one peace her hand holding it together? Ashley was about to go over to see what she could do when Corporal Stone came over to Niarali and began to apply first aid.

Corporal Stone was trained in first aid, Niarali would be fine. She had to be fine. There was more to do and so Ashley walked over to Primey who seemed to be studying the battlefield. "Lieutenant, I'm sorry but what do we do now?"

"Processing." Was the only response she got and Ashley nodded and went to see what she could do to help the others, Private Newburg looked like he was about to piss himself and so Ashley slapped him on the back and told him that he had done good but that he needed to hold it together for a while longer, they needed him to do that.

The private nodded and Ashley moved on to share a smoke with two other marines and once that was done she walked over to where Corporal Stone was tending to Niarali and knelt down next to them. "Is there anything I can do?" She asked in a whisper as she stared at the wound, the veins around it were turning black and Niarali seemed to be straining with the effort of just breathing.

Corporal Stone glanced at her for half a moment and just like that his attention was back on Niarali. "Just talk to her, I'm doing all I can but I've never seen any sort of weapon that could do this sort of damage before. I don't understand it, it ripped through shields and armor like they aren't even there." Stone cursed then and tore open a packet of medi-gel and smeared it over her wound. "This isn't going to be enough, she needs to be in a proper hospital and she needs to be in one now."

The fact that there was very little chance of them getting Niarali to a hospital was left unsaid, the entirety of Eden Prime seemed to have fallen into hell. There was a makeshift sort of field hospital at the field camp just off of the place where they had found the beacon, set up in case of the ancient Prothean tech causing adverse effects as apparently there had been reports of that sort of thing happening in the past.

But it was just as likely that the field hospital, as well as the dig site and the beacon, had been reduced to nothing more than a pile of rubble. When Primey had warned her and Niarali that the fleet in orbit had been destroyed, they had both ran to go and get the lieutenant as he had ordered them to do so. When the had ran into the prefab barrack that had been set up for the 212, all that Lieutenant Rabe needed to do was to look at their faces to see that something was wrong and in that moment he was on his feet and barking orders to the rest of the unit.

The problem was that the dig site was not a military base so when the dig site workers and the doctors from the collage at Constant saw a bunch of marines running about, shouting orders at one another and rushing about with their weapons drawn had caused more than a slight bit of panic but the Lieutenant had gotten them in order and told them to take cover while they defended the site, they were under attack.

After that, it had just been the waiting. They had tried to get into contact with Major Harrison in the city but all they had gotten was static, Primey had a connection to the server hub in Constant which contained tens of thousands of Geth runtimes and what they had learned from them had not calmed things down.

The ship they had not been able to identify but weight class had put it as being a super heavy dreadnought had flown over Constant, many had tried to object by saying that a ship of that size would never be able to enter the atmosphere but Primey had been insistent that there was no mistake, and had used it's weapon, readings were inconclusive as to what it was but it looked like a beam of red light, to cut through the city, destroying buildings and roads and much of it's fury had been focused on the base where the rest of the 212 had been stationed.

The massive ship had left after that, moving so fast that no ship that size should be able to, and casualty reports had flooded into the server. One attack from that ship had left hundreds, if not thousands dead. One of it's beams had cut through a fuel line in the south side of the capital and now fires were burning out of control across the city, the base in the city was in disarray, as it seemed that one of the beams had hit the major's office and it had been reduced to a pile of melted scrap and while the major had not been confirmed as KIA the fact that he had last been seen in his office and no one was now able to reach him did lean to the drawing of any optimistic conclusions.

And that was just what the initial attack from the ship had done, after it had left for whatever thing new that had demanded it's attention, reports of the same sort of monstrously augmented Batarians attacking the city followed and what defense against them could be mustered was small and fractured and it was made pretty clear that there was no help coming for them.

So they had done what they could to set up defenses, setting up barriers and laying down mines and the engineering corp had set up turrets and then had come the waiting, the endless waiting. The enemy at least had the decency to announce when they were coming. The shrieks had filled the air and just like that, they were upon them.

Company Delta, the company of the 212 that Ashley was a part of, was two hundred strong. When they had taken down the first wave of enemies that had come against them that number had been reduced to one hundred and thirty-eight, and over twenty others had been wounded and a dozen of them had been wounded quite severely.

And that was just from the first wave of them, another wave had come after them and another and another and another. And with each wave that they fought off, more and more of her fellow soldiers ended up on the ground. By the time they had fought off a fifth wave, there was less than a hundred of company Delta left standing.

And then the scouting drones that the engineering corp had sent out had detected that a large force of hostiles were moving on them from the south while a new wave was massing and ready to attack them again from the north. They couldn't allow themselves to get trapped between two forces while trying to defend the camp and so Lieutenant Rabe had divided the rest of the company half, he would keep control of the first half and they would hold the enemy there at the camp while the other half, under the command of Primey, would march to meet the second half.

Ashley had been with the second half of the company and they had stood against waves and waves of the enemy, even after the communication with with Lieutenant Rabe and the rest of the 212 had gotten cut off and now they stood, undefeated if not a little bloody. And it was fair to say, they were all more than a little bloodied. Of the around fifty or so soliders that had been sent to hold the hostile force off, there were only twenty-two of them left.

"Processing complete." Everyone turned to look at the second lieutenant as it turned around, sparks bursting into the air from where it's repair drones wearing sealing the ruptures in it's platform. "Commuications are unable to be reastablished with Local Command Unit-Rabe, we are unable to gain status update on Command Unit-Harrison, currant fighting efficiency is near critical levels. Recommended course of action, extract from the immediate area."

"You mean run away!?" Private Tyler, who was clinging to his rifle like it was the only thing in the world that was keeping him grounded. "We can't do that! The others are going to need our help, we can't just leave them! There are still civilians!"

When Primey spoke, it's voice was emtionless and logical. "An overwhelming enemy force was bearing down on them, there is no indication that communications are being block as our connection to the serve hub in Constant is strong and we have asked them if they detect any block in communications, they say that there is none. Ninety-five percent likelihood that there position has been overrun by hostile force, there is nothing that we can do for them."

Private Tyler withdrew after that and for a moment there was silence as the information sunk into the rest of them. Only for a moment though, as soon Primey was speaking again. "We will withdraw to the transport hub and take a tram back to the capital, casualties are mounting and we will more likely save more lives if we go and help there. We should hurry."

"Stone-Corporal, status update on Bhatia-Private?"

The Corporal shook his head. "It's not looking good LT, I've managed to stop the bleeding but whatever those bastards hit her with has caused some type of blood posioning. I don't think she's going to be able to move as it is." Nirali really did not look good, her eyes had slide shut and her chest was moving up and down and her entire body seemed to be straining with the effort of it. "She needs proper medical attention and she needs it now."

The massive figure of the super heavy Geth platform stood still for a moment before it holstered it's light machine guns on it's back, walked over to where Nirali was lying and bent down to pick her up. "We shall carry her until we reach the transport station, no marine gets left behind if we can do something for them. Company Delta, we are moving out."

There were a few grim nods and the company fell in line and as they walked down the hill and through the trees at the foot of it, Ashley tried to pretend that she couldn't smell blood and cooking flesh mixed with smoke and burning hair in the air.

End of Chapter Five

* * *

 **I really hoped everyone enjoyed this chapter,**

 **Next chapter, the Normandy arrives at Eden Prime.**

 **With a ton of love,**

 **DiscordantSymphony**


End file.
